


Flash! Bam! Alakazam!

by jerkbending



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: M/M, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerkbending/pseuds/jerkbending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a long-overdue fic prompt from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nele/pseuds/Nele">Nele</a> - jeeko: new neighbors.<br/>zuko moves in next to jee.  shenanigans ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flash! Bam! Alakazam!

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. this is partially based on true events of my college years. names have been changed to protect the innocent (me) and the guilty (also me). if you like this, come say hi on [tumblr!](http://jerk-bending.tumblr.com/)

In four years of friendship, Jee has never regretted adopting Dozer. Until now. When it's six in the blessed morning on a Saturday and Dozer is raising hell at the patio door, rattling the glass in its frame with his huge paws and baying for all he's worth. Normally he's a dormant rug, content to laze about all day in Jee's duplex chewing on furniture legs, old shoes, new shoes, newspapers, DVD cases, and the occasional television remote if it isn't stowed out of his reach. He's a drooly, sheddy monster, but usually he's quiet and sleeps a lot, a pretty good apartment pet as dogs go. But at the moment he's barking fit to raise the dead, and Jee tries to put both feet in the same sweatpants leg and nearly topples over before his mental facilities are fully online in his hurry to get out there and see what's up. Strictly speaking Dozer shouldn't be allowed in the apartments, but his landlord had been impressed with how quiet and lazy he was and agreed that he could keep him if he remained well-behaved.

He doesn't see the problem at first, when he makes it out into the living room, because it's hidden behind Dozer's bulk. But when he goes to try and pull him away from the doors, he sees the cat. It's sitting perfectly still, pretty as you please, right on the other side of the glass doors, staring at the both of them as if he couldn't be less impressed.

"Shoo! Get!" Jee snaps, waving his hand, which is about as ineffective as he imagined it would be. The cat lifts a leg and begins bathing.

"Shut up!" he hears from outside, though he can't see anyone who might have said it. He pushes Dozer back so he can slide out of the patio door without being followed and closes it in his white shaggy face. 

There's someone leaning on his own patio railing, grimacing; his hair is an absolute mess, and apparently he's not bothered about coming outside in his underwear. Jee vaguely remembers him moving into the other half of the duplex a few days ago, maybe; it's hard to keep track of the days when he works nights, but the bar is easily the best job he's ever had. He spends ninety percent of the night twisting the tops off of beers and the other ten percent pouring whiskey. Dozer is usually lazy enough to be nocturnal, like Jee, and enjoys his 4 AM walks, but apparently even he can be roused when there's an intruder on the premises. And speaking of which.

"Is that your cat?" Jee points to the animal now sunbathing at his feet.

The other man -kid really, he can't be _that_ old, probably college- rolls his eyes, "Yeah, I let her out a few minutes ago. Kitty kitty kitty kitty," he calls, "come on." He leans even further over the railing to call the cat, and Jee is distracted by the eyeful of toned shoulders and muscled back he gets. He rolls his eyes, though, because the kid is wasting his breath. He has never seen a cat actually come when called, or do anything an owner asks it to do, one of the many reasons he prefers dogs.

Of course this is the one time a cat takes interest in what her owner wants, and she yawns and licks at her belly one more time before she rolls over and gets to her feet. 

Dozer, who has been watching with an agitated interest, starts up barking again when she gets up, and Jee smacks the glass trying to shush him. The cat walks, no, _saunters_ across Jee’s patio and hops up onto the railing for one last tail twitch before she hops down and disappears into the other duplex. 

“Can’t you shut up him?” the kid growls, kind of. It loses a little effect when he’s standing there with bedhead in boxers, but Jee’s sweats are on backwards so.

“He wouldn’t have started if your cat hadn’t been over here,” Jee snaps, shooing at Dozer again through the glass. “Keep that thing off my porch.”

“She’s a cat, she’s going to wander,” the kid crosses his arms, “I can’t keep her off just _your_ porch.”

"Then maybe you should keep her inside," Jee's growl is much more effective, though it doesn't seem to phase the kid.

"She gets bored inside. She likes to explore. Maybe _you_ should get some blinds so your yapping machine won't get distracted."

"He doesn't _get_ distracted unless there are _cats_ on _his porch._ He's _never_ barked like this before."

"Well it'd be great if he could stop now!" the kid has apparently decided their conversation is over and follows his cat back into his side of the building. The sliding glass doors aren't ideal for slamming, but Jee gets the sentiment anyway. 

He shakes his head and heads back inside. Dozer backs up from the door to let him in, and he scratches his head for a minute, "Stupid cat. Come on, buddy, let's go back to bed." 

\--- 

They don't get to sleep for long before what few pictures Jee does have hanging from his living room wall are rattling to the bass of something that is probably categorized as music somewhere. It's making his flatscreen vibrate on the stand, and the worst part is that it never gets to end. The same song starts over and over again to be cut off somewhere and started again. By the seventeenth run-through, Jee has a headache. The jukebox at the bar doesn't irritate him nearly this much. 

He knows what this is, though. This has 'payback' painted all over it, but his new neighbor is as stupid as he is hot if he thinks Jee is just going to take this sitting down. It takes some fiddling to hook his laptop up to the speaker set for his television, but he is finally able to drown out the noise with The Best of Merle Haggard. 

\--- 

That night at work is rough since he was awake before his alarm, and he is a little grumpier with the patrons than usual, but his regulars don't care. There's still a little residual anger though, enough to make him drop a glass, be a little more careless pouring and have to mop up the counter, and forget twice when someone orders a specialty drink and have to look up the recipe. It's a long night, but he's finally done wiping down the tables, stacking the chairs, and setting the alarm so he can go home. 

He's looking forward to a run with Dozer if he can coax him into it, a long shower, and the leftover pizza in the fridge when he reaches for his front door handle and comes away with something goopy on his hand. The first instinct is to wipe it off on his pants, but he stalls that because in the porch light he can see that it's clear and thick, could be Vaseline, could be worse. It doesn't have a smell when he dares to sniff it, but it does make opening the door a little slippery. 

Once he's changed into something loose and washed his hands _and_ the doorknob, he takes Dozer around a few blocks and is particular about picking up his poop and carrying it in a plastic sack instead of tossing it into the ditch like he normally does. Dozer gives him the doggy nod of approval when he dumps the sack out onto the kid's Welcome mat. Jee's never been much on subtlety, and Dozer is not a yapper. 

\--- 

There's no cat on his patio to annoy Dozer for a couple of weeks, although part of that could be that he's been sleeping in the doorway of Jee's bedroom and doesn't see her. His neighbor, _Zuko_ , he learns from snooping in his mailbox, is a student at the state university, going by the decal hanging from his car. He wakes up before Jee, but usually isn't that loud except when his boyfriend comes over. 

And okay, Jee doesn't know for sure that's his boyfriend, but it's what he calls him in his head. He drives a blue pickup that is unnecessarily loud when it idles in Zuko's driveway. Two or three days out of the week, he's pretty sure they drive to school together, and they go running together in the afternoons when Jee is getting up and around and making breakfast. (Jee tries to be walking Dozer around that time, or at least in the living room near the window; even if his neighbor is a grouch, he still looks good in a tank top and shorts.) They play a lot of loud videogames together, explosions and gunfire noises occasionally jolting Dozer out of a snooze, and Jee has noticed Zuko's friend staying over more than once, their music and general noise leaking through the walls when he goes to work in the evenings. 

They're up late on one of Jee's nights off, and he's trying to relax with a beer and a movie when their shoot-em-up game starts. He turns the volume up on his TV, and their game gets louder. He turns it up some more, and so do they. Irritated -do they have to do this tonight? one of his few nights away from work?- he plunks the beer back onto the coffee table and bangs on the wall with his fist. After a few seconds one of them bangs right back, and he can hear them _laughing_ over their game. He knocks the wall good one more time and slips on his shoes. 

The thing about their landlord is that he's also the main handyman when something goes wrong, and, being a man after Jee's own heart, he is a lazy fuck. The breaker boxes to both sides of the duplex are bolted next to each other on the backside of the unit between the patios, facing the trees that separate their neighborhood from the Elementary School about a mile down, and neither of them are padlocked. Usually the only one who would need access to the boxes are the landlords and the tenants if they blow a fuse; vandalism is not normally a huge concern. Jee can hear their game from the outside, and it's with a special kind of vicious pleasure that he flips every switch in their box. 

He watches every light go out at once, from their kitchen light on his left to their porch light out front to the complete and sudden silence from their living room. It's a small annoyance and an easy fix, but Jee is petty and doesn't care, closing the front to their box and going back inside. He turns the volume of his movie back down to a decent level and chuckles listening to them scurry around their half of the building to find out what's wrong. 

Eventually one of them gets the idea to check the breaker box, but they don't turn their game up very loud at all the rest of the night. 

\--- 

Jee should have known not to let his guard down when he wakes up the next morning to find his car windows covered in cheese. Not even something easy to wash off like spray cheese. Honest to goodness sliced cheese on every window of his car that he has to pick at and peel off before he can think about cleaning off the residue because it's one in the afternoon and the shit has _melted._ He _wants_ to take all of it, knock on the door, and throw it into both of their faces, but he chucks it in his garbage instead and cleans the windows as best he can. He'll take it to a car wash on his way back from the store because he has a _plan._

\--- 

Later that afternoon when the boys go for their run, he pulls the creeper out of the laundry room and scoots under Zuko's car. He has a whole bag of zip ties in a kitchen drawer that he probably won't ever use, but it was worth it to snap one around the drive shaft of the car with the long tip just resting against the undercarriage. He gives it a flick with his finger just to make sure it'll tap when the car is running and slides out from under the machine. He's not even bothered when they play one of their games at high volume later because this one is golden. Whatever little pissing contest they're having, he wins. 

\--- 

It's not until the next day that Zuko goes anywhere in his car, and Jee is still sleeping when he takes off. He's still gone when Jee wakes up and gets around, as usual, but he doesn't come home until right before Jee is leaving for work. He's a little disappointed that Zuko doesn't even act mad when he gets out of his car, pressing the lock button twice to make it beep like he always does and heading inside. Oh well. To get the full effect of that one, you really do have to be in the car. Jee shrugs it off and puts his own car in drive. 

\--- 

His neighbor across the street knocks while he's waiting for his coffee to perk the next day. She's interested in his new, ah, landscaping project, but would like a bit of clarification on the intent. When he informs her that he has absolutely no idea what she's talking about, she leads him out onto his front steps to see the rainbow that has grown on his lawn overnight. 

Alright so technically rainbows have seven colors and aren't comprised of what looks like gravel, but it's unmistakeable nonetheless. There are three different colors of rocks: a blueish black, a sort of red, and some dirty white of the playground variety, all in quite a neat set of arcs. It's a bizarre sort of yard art among the dandelions and green onions that he usually gets in the summertime. 

"That little brat," he whispers, ignoring the quizzical look he gets from her. She tells him it was already there early this morning when she went out to get the paper, so Jee figures Zuko must have done it overnight while he was at work. And as much as he hates to admit it, he's kind of impressed with that kind of dedication. The arcs are pretty perfect and exactly centered in his small yard; it had to have taken a lot of time to pour them out and then shape them into such a huge design. At the same time, it's kind of strange. There's nothing really _annoying_ about it besides the fact that he's going to have to clean it up before he can try to mow his grass. For a while he entertains the thought of keeping it, mowing around it and weed-eating what he can't mow; that option sounds a lot better than shoveling all of the rocks into a pile and...then what? Plant some cactus? 

Mrs. Across the Street doesn't really believe that he's got no 'agenda' with it or that it's a harmless prank, but that's at the bottom of the things he cares about, and even if he did have an agenda, his sex life is none of her business. Either way, Jee contemplates the 'art' over coffee. Getting it off his lawn is going to require two things he doesn't really have in abundance, time and energy, and mostly the latter. He works most nights, and he has better things to do most days than get out there with a shovel and a trash bag. And would it really be so bad to leave it out there? It would make an interesting conversation starter, and no one could say he didn’t have summer spirit with a lawn decoration like that. Besides, it isn’t bothering him personally, and if Mrs. Across the Street found it disturbing, then perhaps she’d volunteer to come scrape it up. 

\---- 

Jee's Saturday starts out with the auto store clerk selling him the wrong battery for his motorcycle, and he spends most of his morning there arguing with the manager that his 20% coupon should count on the price of the _correct_ battery, not the one that he'd been sold because whoever had been using the computer database couldn't differentiate between day and night. He's finally, finally home with the right battery and looking forward to going for a spin when he gets out of his car and sees Zuko sitting on the steps in front of his duplex in the very narrow shade. His head is down on his chest and he looks miserable. Jee decides to get a dig in as he fishes his keys out of his pocket. 

"Boyfriend kick you out?" 

"Huh?" Zuko looks up. He must have been sitting there a while. His face is red and sweaty. 

Jee frowns; he'd been expecting a 'fuck you' or 'buzz off' or something, not a Zuko who looks genuinely interested in his question. 

"I said, boyfriend kick you out? You locked out?" 

"Oh," Zuko gets to his feet and crosses the small median of grass between their driveways, "I left my keys on the kitchen table this morning. And my phone's in my gym bag in Sokka's truck. So I can't call him." 

Jee's not sure what a 'Sokka' is, but his brain bypasses that entirely to spin around and around on the pretty civil answer, and that Zuko is still in his workout clothes. He must have been in a hurry to get in the house if he left his bag in the truck. 

He sets the battery down in front of his own door and digs his wallet out of his back pocket, "You know you can jimmy the side doors open with a credit card, right?" 

"What?" Zuko looks appropriately shocked and offended, which Jee secretly enjoys as he makes his way around to the side door leading into Zuko's kitchen. 

"Yeah," he works the handle back and forth, pushing an expired gift card in between the frame and the door itself until he can loose the bolt and push the door open into the much cooler interior. From what he can see, Zuko's kitchen looks just like his, only backwards and with more fruit on the counter. He can also see the shine of a set of keys on the table, right where Zuko said he'd left them. "See? You're never really locked out." 

"That's disturbing," Zuko looks like he can't decide whether to be more impressed or horrified, "and really unsafe. Is that common knowledge around here?" 

"Why do you think I got the dog?" Jee grins and Zuko laughs once weakly. He steps past Jee into the kitchen, and because he doesn't immediately shut the door in Jee's face, he follows. 

The rest of Zuko's duplex looks to be exactly like Jee's, only flip-flopped, and he can see why they fight over volume so much. Their televisions are on opposite sides of the same wall. It's also kind of weird how alike their decorating styles are, especially since Zuko's is _obviously_ done in 'broke college student scavenging.' Jee's pretty sure he had the same couch when he got his first place. 

He's surreptitiously trying to see if the same burn marks are on the underside of the rightmost cushion when Zuko clears his throat behind him and awkwardly offers him a soft drink. "Uh, thanks for helping me out. I really wouldn't have thought to do that. Although I'm not sure what that says about _you_." 

"That I've lived in a lot shadier places than this," Jee accepts the coke and sits down on the couch; there are no burn marks, but there is a lot of cat hair. It's not the same one. He's kind of sad. 

"Why are you at this end of town, anyway? I thought the college had apartments for students." 

"Well," Zuko sits down at the other end facing him, "I did the math. It's actually cheaper for me to rent here full time than it would be to pay for an apartment during the school year and then have to find somewhere else to go during the summer. This was the, uh, most affordable place, and it's alright most of the time." He half-smiles and looks up at Jee through his fringe, "I didn't anticipate the, uh-" 

"Cranky old neighbors?" Jee adds. 

"Yeah, sorry about that. I mean, all the. Everything." 

"Don't worry about it," Jee shrugs, "it got a little out of hand, but it was kind of fun. I haven't done anything stupid like that in a long time." 

"I'm not sorry about the rocks," Zuko sits up straight, "not after that trick with my car." Jee starts to laugh from his belly and Zuko raises his voice, "No, do you _know_ how long it took me to find that stupid zip tie?? Do you _know_ how panicked I was the whole day about what was making that noise? I thought my car was going to-to blow up!" 

Jee has to stop wheezing before he can answer, "I learned that one in the Navy. It's good stuff. Remember it." 

"It was terrifying. I took it to the garage so they could run a diagnostic; do you know how humiliating it was when they found out what was wrong?" 

"Do you know how awkward it was to explain to Nosy Across the Street that I'm not going to start waving Pride flags and having mass marriages in my yard?" 

It's Zuko's turn to snort into his drink. "Really? She asked that?" 

"Not in so many words, but yes. Besides, I keep my Pride flag hanging over the TV." He raises an eyebrow while Zuko chokes on his soda, "She was especially interested in how it appeared overnight." 

"We knew we had to do it while you were at work," Zuko is full-on grinning now, and it completes a very attractive picture, "It's hard to listen to someone at Home Depot talk about the porosity of different rock types when all we want is different colors." 

"I bet. I have to say, that was the strangest prank I've ever had done on me. Didn't really know how to top it." He waits a few seconds before asking what's really been puzzling him, “Just…what possessed you to draw a rainbow?” 

Zuko stretches his legs out towards him and leans back on the arm of the sofa, “Last-minute inspiration. Sokka wanted to draw a dick, but I didn’t want you to get arrested for public indecency or something.” 

Jee plows on and asks the question Zuko avoided the first time, “Sokka’s your boyfriend?” 

Zuko makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a retch, and his face can’t decide whether it wants to smile or twist horribly. “No, god no, oh my GOD no. Just my friend. I made him help me move in because he has a truck. Paid him in beer. God no we're not together.” 

“Just wondering,” Jee put his hands up, “he’s over a lot when you play that…I don’t want to call it music.” 

“Better than the dusty stuff you listen to,” Zuko smirks. "The gravel _was_ his idea, though." 

"I'm probably gonna leave it, at least until I have to mow. I don't have time to rake it up." Nor did he really want to. On the list of things Jee wanted to do on his days off, raking was very, very low. 

Zuko's smile falls and he leans forward, "I could do it. I mean, I, kind of, put it there." 

"Thought you weren't sorry about that?" he asks and Zuko chews on his bottom lip, which is kind of distracting. "Anyway, I deserved it. I've thought about planting some cactus around it, in all the colors. Make a real gaudy statement out of it. That'll keep Miss Nosy busy." 

"No," Zuko shakes his head, "really. I should clean it up." 

"Kid, I'm really not worried about it," Jee sets his empty can down on the coffee table and puts a hand up, "but if you're serious, tell you what. You come over and rake it all up, and I’ll buy your lunch. Deal?” 

“Deal.” 

\---  
The next time Sokka helps Zuko move, it’s only next door, so he doesn’t grumble quite as much. 


End file.
